Blame
by Cybaster
Summary: Harry may think that Professor Trelawney's predictions on his death are annoying...but if it came true, how would Trelawney herself feel about it?


  
  
Author's Note: Well, this is it. My first Harry Potter fanfic, and it's pretty long (ouch). It's in Professor Trelawney's POV (I dunno, doesn't seem like a particularly attractive character to write a POV in) about, well...you probably know by now, anyway. This is a first fanfic, and most facts and details probably won't be right, so I'm sorry. I hope you find it in your hearts to enjoy this first fanfic, and please forgive me if you don't.  
  
-Cybaster  
"Believe in the sign of Zeta!"  
  
Disclaimer: Professor Trelawney, Harry Potter, Hogwarts and all applicable names and places belong to Joanne Kathleen Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing and Raincoast Books.  
  
***  
  
For perhaps the ten thousandth time in four years I looked out the window of my room, and when I did, for the ten thousandth time I remembered well what had happened, what I had done, eleven years ago. Classes were over, and so was dinner; Everytime I looked out that same window the stars were shining in the black night sky. Given who I was, I should've been fully concentrated on them and until four years ago, I would've done so. Now, I look out the same window, at the same night stars, and I end up looking at myself, asking myself if there was any way I could've changed my own fate.  
  
But I knew well that even if I wanted to, I couldn't escape fate, much less change it to suit my wanting. After all, I was Hogwarts' prime Divination teacher --- Professor Trelawney, now less-than-affectionately known as the "The Grim Reaper". I was supposed to know that since in my field, I keep predicting other people's fates and frequently expect them to happen no matter what has been done. And most of the time, I'm right...but it's not that most of the time anybody would want my predictions to be right. Not since four years ago.  
  
Even since I first took the job as Hogwarts' Divinations Teacher, I knew that few liked my classes and even fewer liked me. Of course, I never knew why before, but now it's clear as glass to me: even as a Diviner, I was mostly grim and morbid and everyone in Hogwarts knew it. And because I was mostly so morbid in my divinings, I guess nobody ended up taking me or my classes seriously --- probably thought I was crazy or pessimistic or some reason or another to say that I was too paranoid. That was how they saw me eleven years ago...and seven years after that their views about me changed, but it wasn't a welcome one.  
  
It was all because of one boy, and how I had constantly predicted his fate over his seven years at Hogwarts: Harry Potter.  
  
When I first had him in class, I had sensed a dark feeling --- of inevitable suffering, loss and death --- about Harry, and never before had I sensed this way about anybody, even those who had died prematurely in Hogwarts. I didn't react well to it; I feared for his fate because I was a stranger to that grim feeling, of that magnitude, and at the same time I knew that he deserved to know of it, and I told him. After all, I had mostly been right about my predictions and divinings, and somehow I felt more sure of Harry's fate than of anybody else I had taught or met --- more so because over my years as a Diviner, I had learned to believe in my visions.  
  
But Harry and his friends never did believe me or even take me seriously even after all that had happened during his seven years, or even during the inevitable war with Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters during his sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts. He probably didn't believe that he could die so young...but I couldn't blame him, since even as a Diviner, I probably wouldn't believe it when I had been told that I myself would surely die so soon and if there's one single person that a Diviner couldn't predict a fate for, it's his or her own. And since he didn't believe in the fate I had predicted for him while I somehow did, I kept telling him, hoping that he would at least keep my warning in mind and keep vigilant, in case it really did come true. Somehow, Harry always managed to keep not believing me, and somehow he kept surviving through his Hogwarts years.  
  
When I saw his fate, it seemed so strong that I wanted very much to believe it, but it wasn't that I liked believing that Harry Potter would someday, finally, die. After every class I saw him and his fate, I had wanted to forget having ever seen it, to deny that what I had saw of Harry would ever be true. That was certainly what Harry and his friends were thinking of my divination, and deep within my heart, I wanted to agree with them. I thought that seeing Harry keep surviving through his seven years, adventure after adventure after adventure, would let me forget --- but I didn't. Instead, with each passing year, the feeling of inevitability kept growing stronger and stronger around Harry, and try as I did, I kept believing it, and I kept telling him. Harry kept not believing me, and the cycle went on.  
  
Little by little, because of my attempts to tell him, the other students were taking me less and less seriously, too. Some Hogwarts students even tried to get me sacked on the grounds that I had gone insane with constant predictions of Harry's demise and other visions five or six years ago, but somehow, Professor Dumbledore and I held firm. I think that Dumbledore himself believed in it a little, the same way I did --- believing and denying afterwards, and believing again --- and probably because of that, he supported Harry even more in his last two Hogwarts years, as if trying to keep him safe. His graduation drew near, and with that comforting thought and the war with Lord Voldemort winding down by then, I finally began to feel what I had desperately hoped to feel before it was too late --- that what I saw of Harry's demise wasn't true.  
  
Perhaps it was my own fate that had cursed me but in the end, that night four years ago, my own fate finally proved my long-time prediction right. It was that very night, a moonless, deathly silent night, that Harry Potter was slain.  
  
Harry --- secretly leaving Hogwarts and his friends behind, with the will to defeat the Dark Lord blazing even hotter than ever --- had himself flew into a Death Eater army that was heading for Hogwarts and, managing to fly past the army and meet Lord Voldemort in personal wizardry combat, managed to finally take Lord Voldemort with him to his now-inevitable demise, the great heavenly thunder that Harry's final spell had conjured eradicating any trace of him and the Dark Lord on the world. Since Harry had fought Voldemort alone, nobody to this day knew of what had transpired during that fateful duel. That night had been only two days to his final graduation from Hogwarts and the acknowledgement of his right as a full-fledged wizard, and everyone else who would've graduated with him was heartbroken at his sudden loss.   
  
Harry had died all too suddenly, leaving endless grief and heartache behind him as the remainder of the Hogwarts students struggled to come to terms with his passing. Some --- in particular his two best friends, Ron and Hermione, who had stayed by Harry through thick and thin, for those seven years, until his parting of ways that night --- would never forget the sadness of losing such a fine wizard and friend. I didn't classify into that category, but because of it...I would myself be affected by Harry's death in a similar way.  
  
Harry's death --- which I had predicted for seven years --- had brought about a dramatic change of how the students and teachers saw me during the next year. Those who had not believed me before, now did so with fear at looking at one who could dictate their doom, as if looking at the late Dark Lord himself who could easily place the Dark Mark above their heads, sealing their fates. The fifth to seventh years who knew Harry more closely than the rest now looked at me, wondering how they could have ignored such a powerful death threat and silently asking themselves, as if putting me on trial, whether or not believing me back then would've made any difference. They, as things turned out then, were the easiest group to bear with; The third and fourth years who didn't know Harry or me too well, shocked at the loss of such a heroic role model, were the ones who put their questions into audible words, be they whispers or hidden talk, questioning me on how I could've let Harry's fate come to pass. As for the second years --- first years themselves the year Harry died --- all actually spoke out against it, and almost half of that group ended up blaming me for letting Harry die that year. After all, to them, I was the one who saw it come to pass, and to them I had merely let that fact slip by. Fortunately that lasted only the first year after Harry's last; But nevertheless, to this day, questions were still being asked of either me or Harry although fewer and farther between now.  
  
But some still blamed me; That I know for sure.  
  
I, too, couldn't help but feel guilty after that; I knew that someone --- other than Voldemort, of course --- was to blame for letting Harry die that way, and I knew that since I was the one who predicted Harry's fate so constantly, at least part of that blame fell onto me. Everytime I look out that window, I question myself whether or not I had been doing the right thing in telling Harry so fervantly. At the same time, I kept asking myself if there was anything else I could've done, and what results may come of that change --- anything at all to prevent Harry's inevitable fate from playing itself out that day. When I did, I always came to blaming myself, forgetting my Diviner instincts and my previous beliefs that my predictions were mostly right to tell myself that I could always have done something. The feeling of inevitability was so strong then, and yet I had always secretly kept faith that if Harry had believed me back then perhaps his fate would've been different. He had survived for so long, after all...  
  
Each day I asked myself the same thing yet I knew that even if I had tried, what I had predicted for Harry was very much inevitable. I guess that was because I no longer believed in myself, as I had done before. In a way, I was beginning to doubt my own purpose as a Diviner, asking myself whether or not divining their fates like I had done for Harry would be appreciated. Unsure of myself, I no longer divined the fates of other students in class; I resolved that I would leave the divining part to the students whom I taught, and whenever I get visions like that again, I simply kept quiet --- Nobody liked being the bearer of bad news and if it must be told, I would let others do it. I was being insecure, always questioning myself, looking for anything that I could've done to change Harry's fate so none of this guilt and grief would come to pass. No solution --- nothing practical, at least --- presented itself to me when I asked myself that, and yet I kept looking every time I looked out that window, into the stars.  
  
Four years after his death, much of the blame had either passed away or had fallen silent...but although the question of whether or not Harry's fate could've been changed or if there's anything I could've done was kept silent, Harry's memories still remained, and the grief and guilt were still there. I kept teaching, passing each and every day hoping that someday I would forget my faults, but I look out that same window, into the stars I had predicted Harry's fate in, and I remember. Nobody talked to me with mention of my predicting his death anymore or blamed me for negligence, but I knew better. I had saw in the stars and Harry the inevitability of death the first time I had saw him and I would always fear that I could've changed his fate...or at least made him believed, and prepared. I would always be to blame for Harry's death, and I would always shudder with guilt at the mention of Harry Potter...  
  
Because I would always remember his fate.   
  
***  
  
Afterword: And that's that. I dunno...I don't really have a good feeling about this fanfic, since it seems like I've gone overboard with the angsty guilt thing. But hey, Professor Trelawney has to be feeling *something* about being ignored by Harry and his friends all the time, especially if she really believed her visions of Harry were true, and that's the basis of this first fanfic. Once again, please give some constructive comments and criticism, and please don't flame me if I've gotten something particularly wrong. Thanks!  



End file.
